Olya Misik: the Russian teenager defying Putin's rule

FT's Henry Foy meets the 17-year old student who has become a symbol of the pro-democracy movement. Moscow has been rocked this summer by the biggest and most sustained protests since 2012 with opposition candidates banned from September's elections

Produced by Margot Tiounine, edited by Richard Topping, filmed by Mikhail Galustov

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Moscow has been rocked this summer by the biggest and most sustained mass protests since 2012 when Vladimir Putin returned to the Russian presidency.

Opposition candidates have been banned from running in Moscow's local elections in September. And while the city council has little in the way of real authority, such blatant abuse of power has turned these polls into an unlikely political crisis.

Olya Misik, a 17-year-old journalism student, has caught international attention this summer. She has become a symbol of the movement after reading articles from the Russian constitution to the heavily armed riot police deployed to break up the rallies.

Does it surprise you that Mr Putin and the Kremlin and the FSB are afraid of a 17-year-old girl?

And they have batons. And you have the constitution. It's not a fair fight.

The protests and the heavy-handed response from security officials have snowballed from an initial gathering of 1,000 people on July 15 to a mass demonstration of 60,000 people on August 10. Despite around 2,500 arrests and attempts to ban demonstrations, protests have now been going on for six consecutive weeks.

In the past few weeks, Moscow has increasingly seen scenes of police violence and protesters beaten in the streets.

So talking to other young people and people that I've met at the protests, I get a sense that it's becoming cool. It's becoming something that young people want to be involved in.

But if the government were to allow these opposition politicians to run, then surely their protests would have no more purpose.

Activists have vowed to continue protesting until the opposition candidates are allowed on the September ballot. And many joining the protest say they are angry at a broader lack of democracy under President Vladimir Putin's two-decades long regime. With his trust ratings close to decade lows and protests popping up in other cities, Moscow's summer of discontent shows few signs of being crushed.